Don't Look Down
by Barbara Scott Emmett
The wodge of blanket parched the moisture from her
mouth, the prickly hairs caught in her throat. Lauren coughed and croaked and
tried to force it out, pushing it with her tongue. She rolled around, trying to
get her arms free, panic rising within her. She couldn’t breathe. She would
choke.
The van doors slammed and the vehicle started up and
sped across the motel car park. Lauren bounced around in the back as it jounced
over the hard snow. She skidded to the right and banged her hip against a
wheel-hub as the van presumably turned onto the road. As the speed increased, a
wave of anger burned through her. How dare they! How bloody dare they! They
must surely know by now she wasn’t the person they wanted.
She struggled over onto her
side and managed to unwind herself from the blanket a little. Another roll, and
another, and she was more or less free of it. Jerking her arms outward, she
threw it off and sat up. Her lip was bleeding again.
Hot from her exertions as well as her rage, she
swivelled around to look to the front of the van, expecting to see through a
gap or a window into the driver’s cab. What she saw instead made her overheated
blood run cold as ice.
A man
sat with his back up against the cab wall grinning at her. From his hand poked
the greyish barrel of a Luger pistol, which she recognised from films. This was
her very first encounter with a gun of any kind, never mind one pointed
directly at her.
The man was new, not one of
the previous goons – though his tanned skin suggested he was the same
nationality as Brains and Muscle – whatever that was. Albanian perhaps, like
the cleaner. His shining scalp was naturally bald, not shaven. His yellow eyes
flat, dead. Lauren stared at him, transfixed. Had she seen him somewhere
before? There was something familiar about him...
Without taking her eyes off him, she reached up and
pulled pieces of blanket fibre out of the split in her lip. She spat out blood
and lint, watching the gunman all the time, her breathing ragged. He watched
her in return, a lazy grin hovering about his mouth. Lauren was overcome with
hatred. Hatred of the gunman, hatred of all of them, whoever they were. Bitter
seething hatred.
‘I’ve already told the other two clowns I’m not Katti,’ she
said. ‘Can’t you get it into your thick
skulls? You’ve got the wrong person.’
‘But it is not Katti we want
this time,’ said the man. ‘It is you,
Lauren. You.’
Shocked that he knew her name, Lauren fell silent. She
shivered and briefly considered drawing the blanket around her again. She didn’t
have her fleece on, and it was bloody cold. Checking her movement as foolish –
she needed to be free of encumbrances in case an opportunity for escape
materialised – she glanced around the van.
‘No, no,
no, Lauren,’ said her captor. ‘No way out
for you this time. This time, the professionals are on the job.’
Lauren
was aware of a mad drummer doing paradiddles in her chest. ‘How did you find me? How did
you know where I was?’
‘Ways and means, Lauren.’ He
lifted the Luger. ‘Ways and means.’
‘Who are you? What do you want?’
‘Lauren, Lauren,’ he said, shaking his head, like an indulgent father
who is not prepared to put up with any more nonsense. ‘You are not in a
position to ask questions, to demand answers.’
‘I only want to know why you
want me. Why me? What have I ever done to you?’
The
grin vanished from his face. ‘It is not what you have done, Lauren,’ he said. ‘It is what you know.’
‘But I don’t know anything! What do you imagine I know? I haven’t a clue why you’re doing this. Or who the hell you are.’
‘Nevertheless, you know too
much about us. You have seen faces. Faces can be recognised. That is not
allowed.’
‘Not allowed?’ Lauren knew her voice trembled and did her best to
prevent it. ‘But that’s not my fault. They should have covered their faces. So
should you.’
‘You are
absolutely right, of course. Nevertheless, you will have to pay for the
foolishness of others.’
‘What are you going to do?
Erase my memory?’
The man smiled. ‘In a manner of speaking.’ The grin spread across his face; even the dead eyes
flickered. ‘We are going to erase all of you. That will include your memory.’
Lauren knelt on the ribbed
rubber floor of the van, facing her executioner. She was very much afraid she
was about to beg. Beg for her life.
‘Look,’ she said, as calmly as she
could manage. ‘I have no idea who you are, who your organisation is, or what
all this is about.’ She shrugged, reasonableness
itself. ‘I don’t even want to know. It’s nothing to do with me. I’m only here to visit my friends. I’m British, for God’s sake!’
The gun pointed directly at
her. The man’s smile no longer reached his eyes. Lauren steadied herself as the
van sped on.
‘I just want to go home. Please. I don’t care who you are. I couldn’t care
less.’ She knew she was cowardly,
but who said she had to be brave? Not her. She never claimed heroism. ‘Why don’t you let me go? Drop me off somewhere. Anywhere will
do. And I’ll go home and you’ll never see or hear of me again.’
His smile broadened. He shook his head. A look of
genuine regret entered his yellow eyes. ‘If only that were possible, Lauren. If
only I could do what you ask.’ A sigh escaped his lips.
‘But you can. You can. You don’t want to shoot me. Think what a mess it’ll make of this nice clean van. And it’ll only be more evidence. These days, you know, DNA, forensics.’ Lauren heard the desperation in her voice. She knew
she was failing. But she had to keep trying. She owed herself that.
‘Lauren,’ he said, as though to an obtuse child. ‘If it was my
intention to shoot you here in this van, do you not think I would have done so
by now?’
He shook his head, disappointed in her it seemed: a
father studying a bad school report, unable to reconcile it with the bright
child he knew.
‘No,
Lauren. Not here. Somewhere private, quiet. Somewhere lonely. I know just the
place. And Lauren,’ he added, viewing her over
the top of his gun. ‘Do not trouble yourself about the mess. It will be very very
clean.’
